Being interviewed by the world’s press was something Ellie had grown to loathe since reluctantly becoming a public figure. A decade earlier, she was another anonymous worker bee, busy behind the scenes. Then the next thing she knew, the world’s media was both praising her and lambasting her in equal measure. It had made her a tough cookie and she fast gained a reputation for being someone who was ruthless in her quest to make her business one of the world’s most successful. They hinted at the unscrupulous methods she may have used to get there, but with no concrete evidence, it was all just rumour. Ellie had paid enough people off to make sure the full story of her early days in business were never truly revealed.
As public appetite for her story grew, the tabloids had sifted through every piece of her private life, examining her past as if she were on trial. They picked apart her former relationships and threw enough cash at her exes that they spilled the beans on what she was like as a person, as a girlfriend and as a lover.
It made Ellie not just wary of the press but of everyone else too, and made dating a near impossibility. And while she acknowledged it was unfair to tar every man with the same brush, each time she met someone new her barriers would go up and she’d attempt to second-guess the motivation behind their interest. Were they only interested in her wealth? Did banging a billionaire make for good bragging rights to their friends? Or was she going to see another kiss-and-tell headline in the Sun on Sunday? Ellie couldn’t remember a time when Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Cook had been hauled over the coals for their sex lives, yet it seemed to happen to her with an overwhelming frequency.
She rolled onto her side, stretched out her legs and recalled how she had been forced to employ a legal team specifically to fire off warning shots every time she had an inkling the press was up to no good. Then, after half-a-dozen successful libel cases, she became too costly to lie about so they lost interest. Her media team became the go-to guys for all press inquiries, and she turned off her Google alerts, Facebook and Twitter accounts to remove any temptation to discover what people were writing about her. Only when absolutely necessary would she step out publicly as the company’s figurehead.
Ellie gave a frustrated groan at her lack of tiredness, threw her sheets to one side and turned on the bedside lamp. She remembered the email she’d received hours earlier, confirming a DNA Match had been identified. She’d signed up some ten years earlier, when the company was still in its infancy, and as its popularity quickly rose she had assumed it’d just be a matter of time before she found her Match.
But when the number of registered users had powered through the 1 billion mark, Ellie had begun to give up hope. Her Match was either in a happy relationship with somebody else, he was living in a developing country with no access to or knowledge of the test, or he was just not interested in knowing.
So Ellie had grown accustomed to spending her life alone and, in recent years, had become too consumed with work to even care. She didn’t need a relationship to make her content; she could do all that for herself. What could a Match add to her life that she wasn’t capable of finding on her own?
Nevertheless, she had to acknowledge that a tiny part of her was interested in who this person was.
‘Sod it,’ she said out loud, and grabbed her phone. She opened her email, paid the £9.99 for her Match’s details and waited. Two minutes later, an automated response landed in her inbox.
‘Name: Timothy Hunt. Age: 38. Occupation: systems analyst. Eyes: hazel. Hair: black. Height: 5ft 9in.’
His description accounted for almost half the men in the Western world, she thought.
‘Ula.’ She began to type an email to her PA. ‘Discover what you can about a Timothy Hunt, a systems analyst from Leighton Buzzard. His email address is copied below. Email me what you find out in the morning. Thanks.’
To her surprise, Ula emailed her back immediately. Does she ever bloody sleep? Ellie wondered. ‘Has he got a job interview with us? I can’t see him on my list,’ Ula asked.
‘Sort of,’ Ellie replied. ‘And make sure you find a photograph of him. Hire outside help if you need it.’
Ellie placed her phone back on her nightstand and climbed back under the duvet. She turned to lie on her other side and stared at the vacant half of her bed, the sheet just as crisp and unwrinkled as when her housekeeper had laid it that morning.
And for the first time in a handful of years, she allowed herself to imagine what it might feel like to share that space with somebody else.
Chapter 11
MANDY
Mandy hovered at the stone wall which surrounded the address she’d pulled from Richard’s Facebook page. She watched everyone ahead of her hurry up the path, escaping the drizzle, and prepared herself to follow them.
Although she was generally a confident person in most social situations, when it came to large groups of strangers she clammed up and was prone to becoming tongue-tied. She had no idea what she would say if anyone attempted a conversation with her, so she tried to keep a low profile. It wouldn’t matter if she were a few minutes’ late – nobody knew or was expecting her.
Mandy hadn’t thought twice about throwing a sickie from work, and had told her sisters she’d be out of contact on a course. Even if they did find out that she was lying, they’d probably assume it had something to do with Richard Taylor, her DNA Match, anyway.
She took a packet of mints from her handbag and popped a sugar-free Polo into her mouth. She also took out her handheld mirror and angled it in an attempt to check that she still resembled something presentable after the two-hour-long car journey. She ruffled her hair hoping the damp hadn’t made her curls too frizzy.
Finally, when she heard music begin to play inside, she walked slowly up the path, approached the door and braced herself for what she would confront inside.
If she were being brutally honest with herself, she didn’t know what she was doing there or what she was going to get out of it. She was only aware that she and Richard were destined to share something together, no matter how complicated that might be. So she made her way inside and found a seat at the very back.
She picked up an order of service that’d been left at the end of the pew and flicked through it, trying to calm her nerves. Two guitarists played by the microphone stand at the front, singing along to a ballad that she didn’t recognise. Upon finishing, a man with a sincere smile replaced them.
‘Thank you, Stuart and Derek,’ he began. ‘First of all, I’d like to thank you all for coming. And secondly, on behalf of the Taylor family, I’d like to welcome you all to St Peter and All Saints Church for a special ceremony in memory of our dear friend, Richard.’
Chapter 12
CHRISTOPHER
Christopher stared hard at her through the restaurant window, attempting to decipher her body language.
Amy, his Match Your DNA date, was sitting at the table with her arms folded and her legs crossed at the ankle. She looked nervous, he thought. But according to one of the many instructional YouTube videos he’d viewed, this meant she was defensive. Either one worked for him, as it put him at an advantage.
Amy glanced at the clock on her phone’s display at least once per minute. She frequently fiddled with her hair or tapped her feet against the leg of her chair. She was an attractive woman, he conceded, and looked exactly like the picture she had emailed him, after having been filtered, of course.